Blog:Mini fills out on variants

How many body-style variants can you squeeze out of the Mini brand and how many would it make economic sense to do? That's a question it would be interesting to hear the BMW/Mini product planners answer. The coupe concept that will be shown in Frankfurt does look pretty good and I guess they have scoped out a distinct customer group to justify building it.

But reports also indicate that a Mini roadster is coming. Even if that car can be differentiated from the cabrio, to some extent, on sports performance, overlap with the cabrio may be potentially more of an issue than with the very distinctive coupe. Mind you, flexible manufacturing and the ability to do virtual design these days must mean that additional variants are cheaper to do than was the case even five years ago.

Given the startling complexity of obtaining a journalist visa for China - the code 'J2' is now indelibly stamped on my mind - it was with some surprise how swiftly I managed to sail through airport im...